What a Difference a Year Makes: Comparing Young Talent in WWE to Last Year

What a Difference a Year Makes: Comparing Young Talent in WWE to Last Year

For better or worse, ECW, Shawn Michaels and Guest Hosts are no longer with us. With the WWE finding themselves losing stars, such as Batista, Jericho and HBK to retirement and Undertaker and Triple H to injuries, management realized they had a void to fill.

While I believe the WWE has done a better job building young talent in the past 365 days than before, five guys in my mind seemed to have been groomed to take over the proverbial reigns from the biggest and brightest.

So, without further ado, let us take a look at last year's brightest stars, the past year's brightest, each month's star and where that leaves us from here.

May Newcomer of the Month: NXT Season One

The only full season of NXT I found watchable, NXT season one featured some great talent (Bryan, Barrett, Gabriel) some boring guys (Slater, Young) and some guys that no one even knew why the hell they were there (Otunga, Tarver).

On a side note, Michael Tarver's career has been so unsuccessful and irrelevant that I had to go to Wikipedia to look up who the eighth contestant was.

The biggest impact of this season was the major curveball WWE threw us with their invasion, and it's perhaps their freshest angle in years.

August Newcomer of the Month: Daniel Bryan

I'm not going to pull a Rachel Miller and give everyone a history lesson and tell everyone the story of tiegate because if you're here, you know it!!

Anyway, Bryan looked superb in this match. I also think if he can lose the divas and become a down-to-business, let-nothing-get-in-my-way, cold-blooded champion he could be superb. I think his mic skills could fit that too.

The kind of thing that says I will make you feel pain, then backing it up. Watch his exchange with Michael Cole when he was on NXT—it was great.

October Superstar of the Month: Alberto Del Rio

While no one jumped out at me from October, Future World Champion Alberto Del Rio competed in his first pay-per-view.

This will be the match in which 10 years from now when they make the three-disc DVD about seven-time world champion (these are all predictions) that guys in his tag match swear they saw something special in this kid.

Novermber Superstar of the Month: John Morrison

He went from one of the longest reigning intercontinental champions in the past few years to being continuously buried on Raw. He looks to be going in the right direction, anyway; I, along with most other people, dreaded the upcoming Sheamus-John Morrison match.

I assumed this would be the match that got Sheamus back in the title picture. But, creative finally listened! They had Morrison win, lose, then win a classic ladder match.

January Newcomer of the Month: Alberto Del Rio

What a high Del Rio has been on. He and Santino Marella had an epic finish at the Royal Rumble. On a side note, what do you think would have happened had Del Rio botched and actually fallen out of the ring when he came close? Would Marella been recognized as the winner?

Anyway, I think Edge-Del Rio has the potential to be a terrific match at Wrestlemania, a show stealer if you will. Del Rio will also have his Wrestlemania moment.

So What Does That Tell Us?

This tells us that the WWE is the complete opposite of TNA in terms of new superstars. TNA will do anything for a quick rating ex. Sting, Jeff Jarrett, Hogan, Bischoff, ECW, Matt Hardy, Jeff Hardy, etc., etc, etc..

WWE is much more patient. Look at the youngsters WWE has themselves a hold of.

Jack Swagger

Sheamus

Daniel Bryan

Alberto Del Rio

The Miz

John Morrison

Cody Rhodes

Ted Dibiase

Sin Cara

Mason Ryan

Wade Barrett

CM Punk

Kofi Kingston

Drew McIntyre

Evan Bourne

Justin Gabriel

The list is very impressive. Vince knows this may be a down year, with a lack of big names. But these young fresh faces will soon be the big names, and they all have ample talent. Maybe the WWE is in pretty good shape.